Brexit and the waning days of the United Kingdom

[Josquius]

Yeah, 40 million are bred in captivity and released en-masse every Summer.

They're also a bit more recent than the Romans. The Romans brought some over but they largely died out until the Normans brought some over again. The Norman aristocracy then set in place laws to protect them and ensure they remained in place for hunting.... but nonetheless these Norman pheasants are now basically gone, they were mostly replaced by Chinese imports in the 18th century.

Stop shooting and no way would they become pests and take over. I don't think they'd completely die out over any remotely human time scale either, but they would become pretty rare. Needs noting even those breeding out in the wild are fed over winter by game keepers.

Deer are quite a different matter as they are naturally evolved for the British landscape where they're also missing natural predators.
Pheasants are from quite a different place and make an excellent meal for a fox.

[Sheilbh]

I think we're talking about different Starmer hate here.
The stuff I'm seeing absolutely isn't being upset he promised Corbynism without Corbyn (a winning combination) and then did the opposite. More in lines that he is some kind of evil dictatorial socialist. Completely out of wack with reality.

The criticisms from the left I see....generally super obsessed with transexuals. Which is an interesting one. By not taking the easy wins available there he's pissing off people on the left without doing anything for people on the right's impressions of him.

I don't know - the thing I've heard chanted by football fans, that comes up in focus groups, that leads the polls is that he's a liar. And that seems to me to be consistent from the attacks by the left in 2020 right through to now and I think the reason it is consistent is because it is fundamentally true - attack lines that are effective need to be in some way connected with reality.

FWIW I think the "evil dictator" stuff is more online and I think more foreign accounts - either Americans or click-farmers. Again just looking at the opinion polls and what is commonly said about Starmer - I think there's far more criticism of him being weak/incompetent (all of the many, many u-turns - which also contribute to the sense of dishonesty) which doesn't sit well with dictatorial. I think if your only engaging in British news in relation to free speech cases on Twitter from 3,000 miles away the dictator line plays up more.

I researched pheasants a little when I lived in rural Suffolk. Ordinary people shot them there and I was given a brace on a couple of occasions. The reality seems to be that pheasants thrive in certain areas of the UK and shooting them is a form of pest control. East Anglia seems to be prime territory for them in this respect. Conversely they struggle in rough moorlands such as those in Northern England and Scotland. In those areas they need to be raised and released for the benefit of the "sportsmen" that Jos disapproves of.

I mind it a bit less - but in part I think that's because I grew up in the Highlands where there were shooting trips etc. There were poachers who, as you say, would leave the odd pheasant or salmon on people's doors. But also the gamekeepers, the tourism industry around "country sports" trips were quite important big local employers.

It's always the way with anything remotely tourist-y where there's a cost but also without it the local economy for lots of the Highlands would be in real trouble because tourism (of which "country sports" is a big part in certain areas) is maybe the main thing in large parts of the Highlands.

But if you stop shooting pheasants the population doesn't go down, it goes up. See deer. Sure you don't get the population bump from releasing them, but the ones out there already will easily make up the difference. Perhaps not to the exact same level, but enough to be a problem. You can't eradicate predator populations and hunting. You need at least one.

Plus they've been around since like Romans, so they're as "natural" as any other uk wildlife at this point

Deer is actually a huge problem. There was an explosion in deer numbers during covid and it's still very high causing a lot of problems for farmers but also for the Forestry Commissions etc. Part of the problem is also that we don't eat as much venison as we used to (and we really should - it's tasty but also from an animal cruelty perspective they are wild animals, there's no farming, there's no abbatoir).

[Valmy]

Culling is important if you destroyed all the natural predators Sorry Brits but it is the price for civilization.

As bad as tons of deer might be for farmers, imagine how much they would love packs of wolves and bears roaming the countryside.

[crazy canuck]

Why would one want to cull all natural predators?

Wolves and bears are important for a properly regulated ecosystem.

[Sheilbh]

In England there really are barely any "natural" landscapes. The landscapes that people here love have been formed by thousands of years of human activity. The Lake District, for example, should be forested not a sheep range. The fens have been drained etc etc. Of course most of the country was covered in ice a few thousand years back so what is "natural" anyway? The neolithic farmers merely cut down an invasive forest.

I think Tamas made the point as well about how incredibly disconnected from the countryside Brits are. It is a picturesque setting for most of us to conform to what is our idea of the "natural" but as you say none of the environment in this country is natural (and our ideas of the "natural" are also socially and historically constructed).

I've got a friend who is very, very Green, very on the left - but absolutely froths at the mention of George Monbiot over his passion for re-wilding. Basically because he's from the countryside, worked on farms and grew up with farmers' kids. I have slightly similar views from a different bit of the country. And I think it is fair to say that there's a fair bit of "environmentalism" here that basically about the natural world as imagined by town or city dwellers who travel to or through rural areas.

We are all greens to some extent, even if it is merely opposition to the destruction of a nearby park. The problem with the British Greens is they are far too fundamentalist for the nation's tastes and give the whole caring for the environment business a bad name.

Yeah I think also there are trade-offs and I think there is an issue in relying on quangoes. I think there is a trade-off for example between farming and production domestically v environmental protection (especially with things like biodiversity gains and nutrient neutrality). There's no right or wrong but there is a decision.

And on the quango point - I don't think this is Natural England's fault necessarily (though the statement they put out explaining why that report was untrue has been rebutted/fisked by many people. The most generous view is that they've been evasive to the point of misleading - which I think is a pattern in British institutions and corrosive. I think they probably should own it and be frank with the public.

But fundamentally their job is around protecting the natural environment, improving biodiversity etc. It is not their job to consider trade-offs with farmers, or needs to build homes, or public perceptions about Dartmoor ponies. That's the job of politicians but repeatedly we've seen governments not able to get to grips with quangoes - when they try it often gets attacked as "politicising" which is the point of democratic politics. And that failure to get a rip reinforces the "politics of can't" - that basically there are lots of very complicated very good reasons why governments can't actually do things and we just drift while the public get more and more frustrated.

I find some of the quangoes' decisions frustrating but broadly speaking they seem to be doing the job they've been given. It's a bit like civil servants who get a lot of stick for how slow things move and all of these impact assessments - but make the very fair point that they're not the people who passed a lot of laws requiring impact assessments and multiple consultations etc. If politicians find it frustrating they should change the law, or override them as democratically elected politicians and bear the political cost.

[Sheilbh]

Why would one want to cull all natural predators?

Wolves and bears are important for a properly regulated ecosystem.

This may be an example of why my friend is a little wary of George Monbiot:


(Although "I have a solution: wolves" has entered my lexicon )

Wolves were wiped out in Britain about 400 years ago but there are studies on re-introducing them. Bears were wiped out in the middle ages but also studies and trials on re-introducing them. I think the beaver re-introduction's gone fairly well.

I'm not fully sure wolves and bears or bison (another study) are particularly practical in one of the most densely populated large countries in the world. But as I said about the ponies, British people love animals (in part, to Tamas' point, because we're disconnected from the actual natural environment) so I think there's a fair bit of support for re-introduction of lots of these animals.

[Valmy]

Why would one want to cull all natural predators?

Wolves and bears are important for a properly regulated ecosystem.

I am talking about culling the animals that would be their prey like deer.

But introducing Bears and Wolves to England is unlikely to succeed because the population density of England leaves little space for wolves and bears to exist and not interfere with cultivated areas. Which is why both have been extinct in England since...wow 1390. If there was insufficient habitat for wolves in 1390 I cannot imagine the situation has improved since then.

[Sheilbh]

Also by-election today - reportedly most intense Labour GOTV operation fairly seasoned reporters have ever seen. Labour say they've got about 3,000 activists in the constituency today and Reform claim 1,000.

[Valmy]

Interesting since didn't Starmer and the Labour leaders try to block this guy from running in a previous by-election?

Anyway all eyes are  on...um...*checks notes*...Makerfield today.